Tonight I installed an air conditioner in an office in the building that I do side work. This guy does research in economics and social science for a major university. I couldn’t believe this office, there is at least 12″ of paper covering his desktop, there’s a keyboard drawer there, too. The guy is like totally brilliant, though, and nobody in his office would do anything to make him change. I guess some quirks come with the territory of genius!
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Replies
he learned housekeeping from me...
with a little more time, practice and patience he'll hopefully come up to speed and really show his stride.....
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming
WOW!!! What a Ride!
Forget the primal scream, just ROAR!!!
I guess what you're saying is that genius loves company, great minds think (act) alike, something like that?
no.....
slobs in the office...Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming<!----><!----><!---->
WOW!!! What a Ride!Forget the primal scream, just ROAR!!!
The very first high speed laser printer was installed in, I'm thinking, JPL, or maybe it was SRI. This thing could do something like 500 pages/minute, and all the high powered math and physics guys wanted it so they could print out data that much faster.
After several years of operation, though, the facilities folks forced a change in the system where the listings would have to be previewed online before printing to cut down on the amount of paper produced. It wasn't the cost of paper/printing that was the problem, it was the fact that all those stacks of paper were threatening the structural integrity of the building.
BTW, I don't think my office has ever been quite that bad, but close. Classical "chronological filing system" by an ADHD type.
>>> "chronological filing system"
I knew there was a name for the way I did it!If you come to a fork in the road,You can eat your lunch.
Brilliance has nothing to do with an office like that. It looks exactly like my boss's and he's like, the exact opposite of brilliant.
I like the path he cleared to the desk.
I work with someone similar, and his office makes this one look like the oval office! Papers stacked 2 and 3 feet high, dying plants drooping over the desk, tea mugs scattered around....
I can't comment on his intellect, but his office is a model of inefficiency. "Now where did I put that Bloomberg report on the macroscopic cross-section of ultra defused linear extrapolated doggie doo."
"I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." Invictus, by Henley.
Inefficient possibly, but not necessarily. My office was not quite that bad but I usually had four or five stacks of paper and printouts at least a foot high. I could find anything anyone requested within a couple of minutes. When I got a filing cabinet and put the stuff away, I never could find anything... The information technology guru I worked with who was responsible for keeping out IBM mainframe systems totally neat and orderly had an office that was probably worse than the one in the picture. No one was allowed to go in there - he met with people in a separate meeting room.As they say - an empty desk is the sign of a vacant mind...
Edited 7/4/2007 12:05 am ET by CaseyR
Home sweet home.
wot the heck are you doing showing pictures of my office on the internet ?
Oh my god! My mind just blew up. Is there a way I can get in there and clean that up? Must be a guy thing!!
That looks like my wife's home office. I'm afraid to go in there, because I might never find my way out again.
She's really smart, has 5 degrees, but is not at all organized. But somehow she can find whatever she's looking for very quickly.
I recall many years ago, I'm thinking '01 or '02, it became something like a contest of sorts to post a pic of the messiest office of BTers.
Never did find out who won.
Boards, ..........................$8.03½, mostly shanty
boards.
Refuse shingles for roof
and sides, ..................... 4.00
Laths, ........................... 1.25
Two second-hand windows
with glass, .................... 2.43
One thousand old brick, .......... 4.00
Two casks of lime, ............... 2.40 That was high. Hair, ............................ 0.31 More than I needed.
Mantle-tree iron, ................ 0.15
Nails, ........................... 3.90
Hinges and screws, ............... 0.14
Latch, ........................... 0.10
Chalk, ........................... 0.01
Transportation, .................. 1.40 I carried a good
part on my back.
In all, ................... $28.12½
-Thoreau's Walden
I have that written down somewhere ... if I could just find it.
So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do. --Benjamin Franklin
My favorite prof in college had a similar office. When you'd ask him for something he'd reach in and pull it out - he knew where everything was!
Organization through disorganization
Doug